February 24, 2015

There’s something horribly wrong when Canada produces plenty of food for everyone, yet there are many people who are dependent on food banks to eat, says Graham Riches, the co-editor of a new book looking at how wealthy countries around the world address hunger.

A retired director of the school of social work at the University of British Columbia, Riches co-edited First World Hunger Revisited: Food Charity or the Right to Food? with Tiina Silvasti, a social and public policy professor from Finland.

“Hunger has successfully been socially constructed as a matter for charity and not an issue requiring the priority attention of the state and public policy,” says a chapter that deals with Canada’s response to hunger, which Riches co-authored with Valerie Tarasuk at the University of Toronto.